Erasure's Andy Bell Takes the States with his 'Ten Crowns' Tour

Andy Bell Photo Credit: Sean Black

Having been a fan since ‘The Circus’, Andy Bell, the flamboyant charismatic front-man for Erasure, is touring the US, and from our recent conversation, he promises it is a show you do not want to miss. It’s a fine selection of Andy Bell solo tracks, with enough Erasure to make sure we are all covered. He pointed out that Vince Clarke (the Erasure mastermind) provided the original Erasure tracks for Dave Audé to adapt for the tour. In short, if you can, grab tickets to this tour. There’s locations all around the US from October 3rd to December 13th. Get your tickets now!

The following is my conversation with Andy Bell.

Jeremy Hinks: So, Andy, thanks for coming back. I had you on during the pandemic.

Andy Bell: Oh, wow, yeah.

JH: Yeah, and for you to remember the lyrics, you sang “No Point In Trippin” to me, and that was just great. I even got “The Neon” vinyl print sent to me pre-release. So, thank you so much for that.

AB: Well, that seems like a long time ago, feels like a whole lifetime. Yes, we are doing a whole show now, full band, guitarist, drummer, singer, keyboards, for the live shows, and they are all from Nashville. We’re gonna meet up, we’ve done about 20 shows in Europe already, so we’re quite tight, and we’re having a really fun time. Our drummer has worked with Aerosmith; she is really kick ass, her name is Sarah Tomek, and a new backing singer named Chelsea, whom I’m really looking forward to meeting. And our Guitarist is Jerry Fuentes, who toured with Sting, so we’re in good company.

JH: You’ve got an all-star cast here.

AB: Yeah, it all came together by chance, by Dave Audé, who lives in Nashville now. We did half of the recording at his home studio, with his kids, and I slept in the little annex and had a great time doing it.

JH: Well, everyone has a studio in Nashville.

AB: Yeah, it seems like they are all over the place, and everyone’s on speed dial for backing vocals; there are all the session musicians you need there. I was brought up on country music as well, and Rock & Roll, so Buddy Holly, Johnny Cash. So to walk down the streets, I think we went to some studios to have a look around, and I thought, “Wow, just being in the same place where these people had been in”, it kind of gives it, I think a place where music is made, and sung, very much like Utah, there is some spirituality in the air.

JH: So you’re saying there are some wonderful ghosts left behind.

AB: Yeah, some beautiful ghosts, they resonate in great vibrations, so yeah, they leave them around, and it helps that I do have a nice “Country Twang.”

JH: Right, when you did the “Other People’s Songs,” you did that great Buddy Holly cover, I thought “WOW, I mean who doesn’t love Buddy Holly?”

AB: Yeah, he’s my dad’s favorite. Steve, my partner, was playing something, I was in the back of the apartment, I thought, “What is he listening to?” and I thought he was listening to some of my live concert tapes, but then I walked into our living room, and he was playing Roy Orbison on the TV. I thought “Oh my god, there are so many intonations in his voice that were the same as mine”. Although, I didn’t listen to him as much as a kid, people come through you. It’s like my ex Paul, who passed away, he was a HUGE fan of Ricky Lee Jones. And one time I was listening to “Autumn Leaves” and it sounded like a cross between Marilyn Monroe and Ella Fitzgerald, and hearing all these dead people coming through in living people’s voices. It’s like a perfume; it reverberates with your soul. One of my gay friends, Caz, said that Ricky Lee Jones “Sings into her bra”, which I really like the expression, she is a very voluptuous lady.

credit Sean Black

JH: I have never heard that term before. (laughing)

AB: Neither have I, which is why I like it.

JH: Yeah, but the POV of a straight guy!!!!

AB: Yeah, I knew you would like that.

JH: Wow, great introduction to all this, man, really, I love hearing you just talk. When we’ve talked and met before, you just say things. Even the first time I met you, Vince made us laugh, and you said, “Yeah, I always told Vince he could do stand-up comedy if he had the confidence,” but you were always the fun one in the room to talk to.

AB: Yeah, Vince has this memory that he can just pull stuff off the cuff, and we get on so well. People think we are opposites, but we’re not.

JH: Well, he had this deadpan delivery.

AB: Yeah, I never know if he’s being real or not, usually not. He’s actually here right now, writing songs for next year.

JH: Yeah? I did hear something about a new Erasure album in the works. I’ve been on with you since ‘The Circus’ when I first heard ya.

AB: Well, you don’t look a day over 37.

JH: (Laughing) Alright, let’s talk about this new album, it’s different from your work with Erasure, even ‘Non-Stop’ or ‘Electric Blue’.

AB: Yeah, Dave Audé and I met through my partner Stephen, who had a nightclub in Tampa, I was doing a PA there, and he said, “I have this friend Dave Audé who is a real fan, and I think you should write together”. So I flew to LA and we wrote “Here We Go (The Aftermath)” and “True Original” and they both did really well on the club scene, in the US, and we thought, well, let’s carry on. And we did a co-write with Megan Trainor before she became famous, and like all these other people. So we’ve got these odd songs around as well, and we continued to write off and on, and I thought I would like to write a song that was a mix between Whitney Houston’s comeback, and a Fleetwood Mac chorus. So that came out as “Lies So Deep,” and that ended up being a duet with Sarah Potenza. She’s a really ballsy singer, and they are doing a new club album together, Dave and her. So she was perfect for that, and I reached out to Mute (Erasure’s record label) and said I would like to do a double CD with people I have worked on collabs with. Then I realized I had done pretty much an album with Dave. We had worked on it in Amsterdam, but those songs didn’t make it onto the album. One of the songs was called “Last Chance Saloon”, which had a cowboy whistling. (singing a cowboy trail off)

Sean Black

JH: Yeah, “Last Chance Saloon” has “Cowboy Song” written all over it.

AB: There were a few more hanging around, and we chose the best 10 that we had, and the second half was written in Nashville, and took on this sort of white gospel twinge with some kind of… well, I loved going to the Cathedral when I was little, I was never Christened. So I am from the wrong side of the tracks spirituality, but I was in love with it, and I put it into the song, and used it as a guard from being attacked by people.

JH: Well, the way you are talking about this, it sounds like you had a great time putting this together.

AB: It was great, I mean, Dave’s favorite album is ‘Wild’, and he said, “Can you make it a little bit Gospel-ly” and I felt like I didn’t need to impress him, because he’s already impressed. So Vince did the remix for us of “Dance For Mercy,” and that was his favorite song. And he said he had never heard my vocals recorded so pristinely, so it must be the setup that Dave has, and the effects he uses on my voice.

JH: So here you are in your 30 x 2 years of age, and you are still pounding this out, the excitement, and how much fun you’re having with it, right?

AB: Hey, I got invited to sing with The Killers when they played the O2 in London, and one of their road managers was the one who got Adele her deals in Las Vegas. So I thought, “Wow, this guy’s amazing” and he sent me an email saying, “Andy, this is amazing (Ten Crowns), are you showing the young ones how to do it?” Well, that wasn’t my intention, but thank you very much.

JH: Well, Brandon (Flowers) is my neighbor here in Utah; he is from the same town as my wife’s parents and where my father went to high school.

AB: He was so sweet, and he flew his wife over, and I met them, and it’s so humbling when you meet other stars, and they are so gracious. I love that. I don’t like it to be showy, I like it to be quiet.

JH: Yeah, New Order was just here at a festival, and he (Brandon Flowers) came out and sang with them on “Bizarre Love Triangle” and in Vegas a few years ago, and he sang “Love Vigilantes.” Now we just need you to pop up somewhere.

AB: That’s a winner. “I feel so extraordinary, something’s got a hold of me”. (he sang that one, too.)

JH: Oh, keep going, I love that. I love it when you sing.

AB: Yeah, we are going to be in Utah on the 21st and 22nd of November in Park City, Utah.

JH: Yeah, I plan on photographing that gig. I will have a stack of vinyl. I hope you don’t get writer’s cramp. BUT, OK, the new album “Breakin’ Through The Interstellar”, that one was like the early days of trance and raves. It wasn’t nostalgic, cause I look at the electronic music, from Erasure, Depeche Mode, New Order, Pet Shop Boys, but then all of a sudden, rave happened, and they were two different eras in electronic music.

AB: Yeah, or maybe early 90s, yeah.

JH: Totally, I feel like you’re growing into this Euro Techno sound.

AB: Yeah, I feel like you always get these thoughts in your mind that stay there forever, like the beginning of that Boney M song. And Barbra Streisand used, and they had this one album called ‘Night Flight to Venus’ in ’79, but the opening track was “Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome aboard to the starship Boney M” like their spaceship flight was ready to take off. I don’t know if you remember a band called Leila K, the opening track on ‘Carousel’ was on this international space flight. I thought it gave you this “Fasten your seatbelt” for the album.

JH: When I lived in Holland in the late ’90s, that was what you heard EVERYWHERE. If you go by a café or someone’s car, you would hear exactly that sound.

AB: That was a great time. Vince used to live there in the Netherlands, and I would go visit him there. That was where we recorded the “Abba-Esque” ep. It was pretty wild.

JH: Well, your song “Heart’s a Liar” so many of us bow to Andy as a legend. BUT, you and Debbie Harry? There was NOTHING about this that wasn’t just cool.

AB: It was really cool, the way she did it was really cool, she put that “Debbie” stamp on, with this sexy, sophisticated, sultry, not trying, just being this glamorous uber model. She has always been my hero since I was a late teenager, and I never would have dreamed in a million years that I would ever be on a pressing with her. I was asking her for years, via email, her manager, saying “Please, would Debbie up for doing a song with us”, and I thought she was gonna choose “Heart’s a Liar”, cause she always sings about hearts, and liars.

JH: So you totally set her up for this one.

Credit: Sean Black

AB: Well, Dave had made it this dance track, and he slowed it down. She wrote this chorus, and I thought, let’s make it a duet between two lovers; the first verse was a conversation between two people. This talking singing, that’s exactly what she did. And I love it, because it’s this relationship where they know that they’re crazy for each other, at the same time, completely self-destructive.

JH: Well, you’re talking kinda like that one she did with Iggy (Pop).

AB: YEAH!!!, What was it with Iggy… “Well, Did You Evah?” So I have my own Debbie here.

JH: The fact that you’re still doing this, in 20 x 3 years old, is that better?

AB: YEP!!!

JH: So you’re still doing this, and getting Debbie Harry to come do this with you, and the house in the video was beautiful.

AB: Yeah, we were in LA the day after the fires, but we had the ghost of Debbie there. I just felt like it’s having a designer house, a Versace, it’s the same as having Debbie on your record, it’s like being in this house of a great designer. It had that feeling, and it made me feel like that moment in my career, like how Madonna always felt in all of her videos.

JH: Well, Imma just gonna say this, “BOUT TIME!!!”, I am so excited to see you perform live. So, any old stuff?

AB: Yeah, half and half, and there is going to be a cover version in there, and all the Erasure stuff, Vince sent his original reprogrammed pieces today. And Dave has dressed them up, and they mixed them so well to go with “Ten Crowns,” it’s seamless.

JH: Well, my Erasure, well, it rotates.

AB: I get it.

JH: My fave songs are “The Hardest Part” and “My Heart… So Blue”.

AB: (Singing My Heart… So Blue), that’s an old one.

JH: Well, I had a buddy die by suicide in ’88, and we played that one at his funeral.

AB: Wow, that’s special.

JH: Yeah, everything on that record was dark themed, but you gave it to us in such a beautiful way. I will again echo my gratitude to you for those songs.

AB: Well, grand, you have buttery heart.

JH: Well, I’m looking forward to seeing you. I remember watching you on The Innocents and you were dancing and running on stage so much, it was exhausting.

AB: Yeah, the cartoon is moving more slowly these days. I like to concentrate more on the song than being out of breath.

JH: Andy, thank you so much. Always a pleasure talking to you. You never grow old, you just grow gold. See you in November.

MORE ANDY BELL

For more on Andy Bell, head to his home page. And for tickets for the Ten Crowns Tour, go here.

andybell.com

And for more on Erasure, head over to their info page.

Erasure’s Andy Bell Takes the States with his ‘Ten Crowns’ Tour

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